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How Firefox Got Fast Again

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Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#551

Post by ocdtrekkie »

BuckRogers wrote: post #507
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason I originally left Firefox (for Edge, mind you, I don't touch Google software anymore) was the single-process issues they fixed with electrolysis which came out in Firefox 48. Bloated websites (usually Google ones) would actually lock up the entire Firefox UI, and Windows would recognize the browser application as "Not responding" until the page finished loading. In the case of a super bloated site lik…

I'm a Firefox or native-platform browser guy. Some sites are laggy on anything except Chrome. Browsing around Groupon causes periodic freezes for me in Firefox. I haven't noticed this particular case in Edge but it does lag over time on other sites. The whole issue of sites freezing and lagging without using Chrome is concerning, and it's not pushing me to use Chrome. I think that's Google's aim by creating that situ…

Of course, the sad state here is that a lot of apps are now Electron-based, so you end up with Chrome anyways. >.<

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#552

Post by geekamongus »

scholia wrote: post #509
geekamongus wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pinboard seems to be minimally maintained. I've tried contacting the developer (it is just one guy) and have had no response. A bit concerning, if you ask me.

I have seen him being very responsive to paying customers and his charges are reasonable. However, it seems he did get deluged with delicious users whining at him after he saved that service, and you wouldn't reasonably expect a one-man business to be able to handle that. You could always try tweeting him. He's also on HN.

Eh, I moved on. I paid for a year, but decided I didn't want to invest too much in a service that seemed more likely to vanish than others.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#553

Post by gatmne »

sangnoir wrote: post #489
fencepost wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signing into an account in Chrome almost got someone fired at a small customer of mine a few weeks ago. Fortunately they called me first to look into it, I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. I also wrote this up for the owners to send to the…

> I pointed out that the porn bookmarks in question were years old and that since Chrome was signed into a personal account it was pretty likely that the same account had been used by other family members at home. So the offence was merely having porn bookmarks in their browser - not visiting porn sites at work? Wow.

I imagine porn bookmarks showing up in an official screencast, presentation, or live product demo would do wonders to a company's image and reputation.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#554

Post by BuckRogers »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #551
BuckRogers wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Firefox or native-platform browser guy. Some sites are laggy on anything except Chrome. Browsing around Groupon causes periodic freezes for me in Firefox. I haven't noticed this particular case in Edge but it does lag over time on other sites. The whole issue of sites freezing and lagging without using Chrome is concerning, and it's not pushing me to use Chrome. I think that's Google's aim by creating that situ…

Of course, the sad state here is that a lot of apps are now Electron-based, so you end up with Chrome anyways. >.<

I've been wondering about that, and how for the "app" side of the webstack if wasm will wipe out the traditional webstack "apps" and put things back in a more orderly fashion. Webstack for web documents, wasm for applications. If wasm becomes the univeral app platform for many appstores and the browser, I'd welcome that over Electron.

It's probably inevitable that shoving Node based apps into the market falls flat in favor of more efficient native code solutions due to mobile. I've been viewing Electron as a temporary stopgap with that in mind at least.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#555

Post by drdaeman »

GuB-42 wrote: post #356
callahad wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox Sync is intentionally designed so that we can't read or recover your data; it's all encrypted client-side. Chrome is specifically designed to do the opposite: Google explicitly states that when you sign into Chrome, "your experience in other Google products is personalized by including your Chrome history with your Web & App Activity." ( https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277 )

A good point. Firefox sync has zero-knowledge encryption, Chrome sync doesn't. It is just that if Firefox sync stores your history, Chrome sync probably does it too. And interestingly, you could have a page showing your search history with Firefox sync just like with Google. Just because a page shows you private data doesn't mean someone else has access to it, and the more common opposite is also true.

Not exactly zero-knowledge, just end-to-end. They have the encryption key (called kB), but it's encrypted with a key derived from your password.

(Note, that while the password and key derived from it never normally leave the brwser, the login page is served from the network. So, you trust Mozilla's servers to not get hacked and serve you insecure login page.)

The system also has a notion of "class A" storage, where Mozilla knows the key (called kA), but AFAIK nothing ever used that. Maybe its already gone.

Oh, the device names (and types - like desktop vs android) are not encrypted. Probably because of attempts to add push updates (normally, sync is just polling for updates). And the profile data too (not a part of Sync at all - its Accounts).

Google has optional client-side (also, E2E) encryption, for some types of the data (e.g. passwords and autofill data). One has to opt in explicitly. When opted in, data is encrypted with a key that's is derived form a passphrase you provide (and sync implementations would error and ask you for the passphrase). I'm not sure, but IIRC protocol has provisions that allow to not encrypt some data at client's (= Chrome's) discretion, as the encrypted flag is set per-object. I'm not aware if this is used or not - was a very long while since I've looked at their sync server implementation.

That said, for E2E encryption both system have feature parity, but Mozilla's one has it by design and Google's one only as an opt-in.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#556

Post by scottlamb »

norswap wrote: post #544
mapgrep wrote: post #52

I switched back to Firefox 54 from Chrome when multiprocess browsing ("Electrolysis") came out of beta. It's been absolutely great. It's fast and I trust and like the nonprofit behind it. And all the extensions I care about are available. My main issue with Chrome was the endless nags to sign in to a Google account, and just generally wanting less dependence on Google. I also like that Firefox has a built in tracking…

Counterpoint: as a longtime Firefox user, I have to restart it every couple day. It still hemmorhages memory and just gets unusable after a while. Even if it's the extension fault, why they aren't sandboxed properly, or even why there eisn't basic reporting about the offenders boggles my mind. Maybe it's because of the API... I find it hard to believe it isn't possible to retrofit some of that on the current design t…

Are you using Firefox nightlies? As I read the article, the Quantum improvements they're talking about are nightly-only today; they get released tomorrow. So I think when you say "now" you're still talking about pre-Quantum.

That said, I don't know if Quantum fixes the specific memory leaks you have, adds (back?) the extension hooks you miss, or adds the reporting you're looking for.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#557

Post by dogprez »

snikeris wrote: post #293
snikeris wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Djikstra write about this? I wasn't able to pull anything up, but maybe this will jog someone's memory.

Found it: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EW... Section beginning, "My next linguistical suggestion is more rigorous"...

Thanks for finding it. Here's my attempt at a tldr: Teaching with analogy is bad because it robs students of jumps in understanding. By scaffolding new concepts on things they already know they are losing the opportunity to learn how to make cognitive leaps, which is a skill itself. One that Dijkstra believes is is paramount to combatting dictators or zealotry.

Did I read that right?

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#558

Post by nextos »

jordanb wrote: post #531
SSLy wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uBlock origin with uMatrix

I use uBlock Origin plus uMatrix but I have to say that it's probably only for people who are really serious about security. It breaks nearly every site by default.

Does uMatrix really give a lot more security on top of uBlock Origin, in exchange for all the inconveniences?

I tried several times, but ended up sticking to a sandbox (firejail) + uBlock Origin + HTTPS Everywhere.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#559

Post by bzbarsky »

nkkollaw wrote: post #357
laken wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. Chrome can never handle my 150+ tabs per window that Firefox can.

What do you do with 150 tabs? When I have 20 open I already start to get confused about where stuff is...

Not the original poster, but...

I have 9 virtual desktops; I typically have browsers in 6-7 of them for various in-progress tasks. That's somewhere between 6 and 14 browser windows (I can fit two side by side on my screen), with multiple tabs in each.

Finding things is easy. Even ignoring the per-task categorization by desktop, Firefox lets you search all your tab titles/urls: just type "% " in the URL bar followed by your search string. If I'm looking for something specific, this is the simplest way to find it.

Re: How Firefox Got Fast Again

#560

Post by zanedb »

icc97 wrote: post #515
type0 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't track your entire web browsing history Entire or not, does Google analytics apply here?

Yeah, I think this is where things start to get fairly pointless with avoiding being tracked. I'm imagining that even at a basic level they can match up any Google searches / GMail you use to your IP address and then follow that via Google Analytics. I'm happily using DDG as a replacemet for most Google searches. But I guess I need to stop using GMail.

ProtonMail or Tutanota are great replacements.
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